SENEBIER, Jean (1742-1809), a Swiss pastor and voluminous writer on vegetable physiology, was born at Geneva on 6th May 1742. He is remembered on account of his contributions to our knowledge of the influence of light on vegetation. Though Malpighi and Hales had shown that a great part of the substance of plants must be obtained from the atmosphere, no progress was made until more than a century later, when Bonnet observed on leaves plunged in aerated water bubbles of gas, which Priestley recognized as oxygen. Ingenhousz proved the contemporaneous disappearance of carbonic acid; but it was Senebier who clearly showed that this activity was confined to the green parts, and to these only in sunlight, and first gave a connected view of the whole process of vegetable nutrition in strictly chemical terms, so preparing the way for the quantitative researches of N. T. de Saussure. Senebier died at Geneva on 22d July 1809.

See Sachs, Geschichte d. Botanik, and Arbeiten, vol. ii.